


Scappa La Gloria

by Hayato (TheLennyBunny)



Series: La Familia [1]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Gen, Non-Chronological, Not A Fix-It, Post-Canon, a lot of people are mentioning the anime fuck if i know why, depictions of post canon irritate me and im fixing that, i solely read the manga
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 07:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13383462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLennyBunny/pseuds/Hayato
Summary: A hopeless Sawada Tsunayoshi escapes.





	Scappa La Gloria

Tsunayoshi and Nana left on a rainy day, two days out from their flight. Mukuro and Chrome are positioned around the mansion, and it’s little effort for the man to start an argument with Kyouya, for Chrome to make them invisible to the naked eye. It’s little effort for Lambo to fritz the security and allow them to pass unseen.

They slide into a cheap car, shutting the door as a low-ranking Foundation member started the engine. The man was loyal to Kyouya and Kusakabe, first, and Vongola second. He wouldn’t betray his supervisors’ orders, when the Famiglia came knocking for answers.

The ride to the airport was tense, both waiting for a sudden setback, and obstacle, but it never came. Someone had to know what they were doing, to interfere, and none but Uni knew the whole plan.

They stepped out of the car with minimal luggage, enough to hold clothes for a week and keep them afloat before they slid into the apartment provided by a bemused Fon. L’Aeroporto Nazionale di Napoli was large, and Tsuna stared up at it for a moment before they hurried in.

They passed off passports for Yang Jia and Yang An and had the worker eye them for a moment, freshly-dyed hair neat and clothes suitably casual and tourist, before telling them to weigh their luggage. An hour later, they were waiting for their flight to start, looking out at the runway from the window next to their seats.

Tsuna breathed in, out, and leaned on Nana’s shoulder.

They were free. Nothing could stop them, now.

* * *

Tsuna turned the ring over and over in his fingers, watching it glitter in the sun.

He resisted the urge to throw it out the window, never to be seen again as they drove through the city.

* * *

Most days were the same, his routine fixed. Wake up, get dressed, check from his room that the overnight security reported nothing suspect. Have breakfast with the family and Famiglia. Check for any updates on operations, see if anyone in the field has come back yet, or at all. Do that until dinner, with possible meetings and meals thrown in between to please other Dons. Dinner. Training, because a Don didn’t let himself go. Bed.

Rinse and repeat, just like his adolescence. Except now his routine was dotted with blood and subterfuge in place of disappointment and ennui.

* * *

“Pappa?” Tsuna blinked, closing out the window on his computer of plane flights. Nana stood in the doorway of his office, hesitating. She was as weary as usual, the signs of stress in her eyes and stance, and he hoped that she hasn’t caused another explosion in the gym, for both their sakes. “Donna Giglio Negro is here. I saw her on the way to my room.”

He sighed soundlessly. Uni. A few hours of respite. He nodded at Nana, smiling weakly, and she hurried off, likely to her room. He watched her green head disappear around the doorway and wondered at the merits of pushing up his plans.

Uni appeared not ten minutes later, Gamma following as her like usual. The woman smiled at him as she closed the door, nodding at her Lightning. With a flare of his Flames, the cameras in the room were knocked out. Tsuna slumped over the moment they were safe.

“You know you can’t go back from this,” Uni said softly. Tsuna only shook his head, chuckling weakly.

“What else am I going to do? It’s this or going like my mother.” They both paused at the thought of that, a moment of silence. There was still a painful void in his heart, where she had been. Uni finally sighed, rummaging through her jacket. She pulled out two slips of paper, passing them over to him.

Plane tickets, set half a year later for a one-way trip to Hong Kong. He glanced up at her questioningly.

“That soon?”

“It’s the best window. You’ll not have another one.” Uni hesitated. Stepped forward, drawing him close and hugging him close. “I’ll miss you, fratellone. Be safe.”

He hugged her back and prayed that she would stay whole.

* * *

He and Kyoko married. It seemed like the thing to do, what was expected. They’d been school friends, then together, after all, that “crush” of his finally panning out, and it wouldn’t do for anything untoward to happen because they weren’t, would it?

Tsuna never knew how to explain to their friends and family that the sole reason they fell together was because he’d gotten drunk after a panic attack, and it simply never stayed a one-night fling. She was stuck joining a criminal organisation because she wanted to make sure her brother was safe, and he was stuck running it.

No one ever said a word about how they never slept in the same room, or how Kyoko only became pregnant after Reborn and his father mentioned heirs.

* * *

Tsuna panted, wiping blood from his mouth as he gazed around. He knew they were illusions, plants rising to grab at him and hounds biting at his legs, but he couldn’t find the source, strike them down and eliminate the distractions. At random, he flung out a wave of Flames, distorting the illusions. Nothing.

“Oya, oya, getting rusty, aren’t we?” He jabbed backwards. The voice in his ear chuckled, not moving. “Should you really have let yourself fall into complacency like this, Decimo? Another Don could take advantage.”

Another wave, dimmer than the first, then another.  _ There _ . He darted forward, slamming into a pale figure and engulfing them in his Flames. Chrome’s illusions dropped as she shifted in his arms, leaving only Mukuro’s. But even as he prepared to shoot off another gut of Flames, the rest faded away, leaving the arena empty. A few metres away, Mukuro scowled at him.

“This is pointless.”

“Excuse me?” He straightened up, ignored the pain in his side, well familiar with it and knowing it couldn’t be more than a few bruised ribs. “Mukuro, just because I’m a bit slower-”

“Do you know how obvious it is, that you’ve finally made up your mind?” He froze. Mukuro stalked towards him, slowly, leaning in. His voice dropped to a whisper as he leaned close to an ear. “It’s clear to anyone looking. I don’t think I’ve seen your Flames this bright since the twins’ births.”

His breath was stuck in his chest. His eyes flickered between the two of them and fearfully, desperately, he knew that even with thirty years of memories he would take them out, if they threatened his chances. The duo seemed to sense this, Mukuro stepping back with raised hands while Chrome lowered her trident.

“Oya, so scary! But you seem to misunderstand, Tsunayoshi. We-” Mukuro gestured expansively between him and Chrome- “-aren’t stopping you. If anything, dear Nagi has convinced me to, you would say… lend a helping hand.”

He hesitated, fell back on his Intuition. It told him to trust.

“What did you have in mind?”

* * *

Nono died two weeks after his graduation. Heart failure, the autopsy said.

Tsuna supposed he should have felt something, like his grieving father or solemn tutor. Gokudera spent the trip to Italy murmuring about the ramifications, while Mukuro was ecstatic and the others confused or bored. 

The funeral was a grand thing, Dons and Donnas paying their respects while everything was meticulously arranged to appear as though their every move wasn’t being watched by the guards. The second part, that of the trek to the mausoleum, was only done by those “closest” to the man, Nono’s Guardians and last remaining son leading the procession. Xanxus was at the front, surprisingly, although Tsuna supposed it wasn’t, not really. A son he had not stopped being, in those interim years of anger and punishment.

Nothing felt final, or concrete, setting the coffin inside and leaving. It wasn’t like the movies, where there was some sudden realisation, or a loud breakdown, or a catastrophic event. Tsuna didn’t have a sudden epiphany, or emerge from the ceremony a new person.

He already knew his life wasn’t his own. Anything else didn’t merit actualization.

* * *

Tsuna’s computer was one of the most protected pieces of hardware on the property. Nothing incriminating on it, not enough to arrest, but it was this machine that everything Vongola routed back to, every over-the-table transaction and decision. Employment records, finances, even building layouts.

With this in mind, the only ones with access to it were Tsunayoshi himself and Basil. Basil, who never visited the main compound more than once a month, and would never betray his trust, no matter what he saw. The Don was below only God, and one did not blaspheme either.

Tsunayoshi was grateful for the mafia sensibilities as he worked with Irie and Kusakabe, falsifying documents and building two lives entirely from scratch.

* * *

Sawada Nana found out about her son and husband’s work when she was attacked in her home at the age of forty and burst in green flames. The attackers didn’t expect her to be Flame Active. No one did, as civilian as she was, but being surrounded by Actives and Ascendants for seven years had its effects. The shock of it gave Vongola that small window of time they needed to burst in and terminate them all.

Iemitsu suggested he be the one to sit her down and explain it. Tsuna resisted the urge to tell him he barely knew the woman, and that him doing that would end in them needing to separate the two for years before she stopped screaming at him.

So Tsuna was the one to tell her, sitting her down in the kitchen after making tea. He was the one to outline the history of the Vongola, what had led to their blood crossing into Japan and all the way down to Iemitsu. How Iemitsu had been pulled in from an orphanage, thanks to uncovered documents about the first boss’ flight. How, at the age of thirteen, because of no other viable candidates being available, he was chosen as the next boss.

Nana asked how he agreed to that, how Iemitsu did. Why no one told her. Tsuna told her he hadn’t, didn’t, and that Iemitsu had forced the issue, along with Reborn, Nono, and everyone else that appeared in his life. That she hadn’t been told because she was a civilian, protected, and thus didn’t merit the trouble. Until now.

Nana thanked him for explaining and asked if he wanted to eat something. He declined and left, because if he stayed, he would have destroyed something, begged for forgiveness, tried to attack Iemitsu.

Sawada Nana passed a year later, Flames snuffed and everyone around her baffled as to why. Tsuna sat at the funeral, Western because Iemitsu had forgotten his own wife, and begged the gods for forgiveness, for her safe passage to somewhere kinder. He told no one of the note he found stashed in his old books, saying she hoped he lived his own life one day, and that she was sorry for never seeing it.

* * *

Strong arms encircled him, and Tsuna froze for a split second before he recognised the bond thrumming, the scent of smoke and wine wafting from behind him.

“Tsuna-nii,” Lambo murmured, resting his head on Tsuna’s, “What are you doing?”

“...Approving the Torino trade embargo?”

“You forget,” Lambo said carefully, “That I’m the one who spends the most time with Nana.”

...Right. Of course. 

She wouldn’t be as experienced at acting as he was. Her sudden uptick in mood and paranoia would of course be noticed. He slid backwards, pushing Lambo away and turning his chair around. The younger man looked down at him, watchful and expectant.

Tsuna remembered him the first time they arrived in Italy, disappointed and sullen, and him at Nana’s funeral, bitter, quiet, so unalike himself. How he’d never stopped coming to Tsuna, even if that animosity with Hayato and clinging to I-Pin faded.

“Where do you want me to start?”

* * *

The twins were, in a word, salvation. Only one planned, but Tsuna wasn’t resentful of the other. Nana and Giotto, named after the only ones to look at him and see  _ Tsunayoshi _ , not  _ Decimo, Dame-Tsuna, Vongola. _

He raised them alone. Kyoko moved back to Namimori, a year after their birth and a month after their divorce. The others were shocked, worried, thought something was wrong even as Tsuna smiled and waved them off. They had been discussing divorce since the wedding.

Nana and Giotto grew up spoiled, knowing both parents loved them, even if only one was there. They were taught by La Famiglia, Hayato piecing together maths while Bianchi went over chemistry, Takeshi painstakingly reviewing his Japanese while Lambo easily guided them through English. Tsuna took charge of teaching them history. He wasn’t going to let anyone else tell them their “version” of it, as Reborn had done for him.

At five, their Flames were drawn out, tested to see if either was eligible. Nana was unsurprising, with bright green hair and eyes, spikes that erupt around her when particularly angry; her Lightning Flames are strong, and always have been.

Giotto was a Sky. Tsuna should have expected it, knew it instinctively with his Intuition and rationale, but it didn’t stop him from curling in his bed and mourning his son.

* * *

Tsuna wondered if it made him a bad person, that he avoided his old friends.

Takeshi and Hayato were back from a mission, having been sent to handle a dispute over land that Tsuna didn’t trust lower members to handle. He had caught sight of the two in the courtyard, and it had been on automatic that he went to the lower levels of the mansion, heading to the storage rooms. Marcel had been appreciative, if confused and nervous, for the help in counting stock, and Tsuna had taken a clipboard and began.

It was a complex matter, he supposed, like everything in his life was now. He loved them, truly, like one would brothers, comrades in arms.

But that distance between them could never be crossed, at this point. Takeshi had adjusted, adapted,  _ thrived _ since their school days; Hayato had never needed to, born into this. And Tsuna… hadn’t. He sometimes wondered which one of them that made strange, off-center. Some days it was himself, surrounded by the others living happily while he festered and clung to bitterness. Others, it was them, the old friends so well-adjusted they spoke of slaughter casually after missions, joked about victims of the lower ranks, left in the gutter to die or kill themselves weeks later.

He sometimes wondered how the most cowardly of their group was the only one to keep their humanity.

* * *

Tsuna had a tendency to call upon Giotto, the senior,  _ Il Primo _ , when it became too much. With Nana gone thanks to her own decisions and Kyoko thousands of miles away, the shade was the only one left to him.

Two months before Timoteo’s death, he had summoned the shade, ring digging into his hand as he sat on his bed, head hanging. The house was empty, one of the few nights he’d had alone since he was thirteen, and he was desperate, scared,  _ tired _ .

Giotto formed slowly, always slowly, and sat with him as Tsuna tried to breathe and relax, release some of the ever-present tension. When the man suddenly slid to his knees on the floor, Tsuna startled, stopped in the middle of talking about Ryohei and his worrying ambivalence on everything, about Nana and the slow suspicion that was coming over her.

He dropped into seiza, head touching the wooden slats of the floor. Tsuna stared.

“I’m sorry, Tsunayoshi. I am so sorry, and I know it will never be enough.” Tsuna could hear him swallow, see him shake. “Because of my own cowardice and recklessness, you are forced to suffer time and time again. I-” He broke off, voice cracking. “ _I’m_ _sorry._ ”

Something in him cracked at seeing this larger than life figure, treated like a legend among the Vongola, trembling at his feet.

He pulled Giotto back up, and they sat on his bed until someone came home, Nana or Reborn or one of the kids, and he faded away. Tsuna didn’t move for minutes longer.

* * *

Giotto and Nana’s eighteenth birthday celebration was an opening.

Dons and Donnas there, mostly allies and a few that were grey-areas, mingling with the Famiglia as the twins accepted congratulations and played the simpering hosts to the fools. His guardians were talking amongst themselves, joking with the Varia and Dino and the others, and Tsuna watched it all and fought the urge to set the floor aflame.

Tsuna watched Giotto talk with his Rain, a quiet woman they had found in the north. She was loyal to him, saw him as a new beginning, and it would have made him smile if he didn’t know she already had enough red in her ledger to soak the page. 

The boy’s Mist was off to the side, his Sun hovering by the food, Cloud and Storm hiding somewhere, and out in the corner, leaning against a table while Dino’s child jabbered at her, was Nana, jabbing at a piece of cake. Slated to be the Lightning, no matter her own desires. Tsuna watched her smile noncommittedly at the older heir, eyes wandering around the ballroom. They locked on his for a moment, curious, before sliding away.

He waited until most of the guests are gone, only housestaff left to clean and stragglers reluctant to head to their rooms. Nana was still in the corner, fiddling with her phone instead of speaking, and he gently pulled her away, had him follow him down the hall to an office so decrepit they’d never bothered to put in security taps.

“Pappa? Is something wrong?” He hesitated, looking at her, doubting his decision almost- but his Intuition was screaming that this was right, true, the best option, so he forged onward, pulling up some of the determination he’d thought abandoned. His eyes sting.

“Happy birthday, sweetie,” He started with, smiling weakly, “Did you enjoy the cake?” She nodded enthusiastically, her face finally pulling into a smile, and he chuckled. She always had had a large sweet tooth. He sighed, though, glancing away and running a hand through his hair. “There’s something… I think you should hear.”

He explained their legacy to her. The unembellished version, nothing like the one he had given them at seven, then ten. Talked about how Giotto had fled because the mafia distorted his dreams, only for his family to be targeted once again. How Xanxus had been trained for leadership then shunted to the side, and punished for his anger. How Iemitsu had married her namesake, left her alone for years, then crippled his son based on a split decision. How almost a decade later, he came back and forced that son into a legacy far too stained for him to stand.

How that son denied, screamed, protested, and it amounted to injuries, more people pulled in, destruction. To his mother Fading. To the few friends he had made willfully corrupting themselves.

How that son saw it echoed in his own daughter, slated to a destiny she never wanted.

“I don’t want my child wasting away like my mother did, like I am, Nana,” He whispered. He pulled the packets out of his coat, easy to hide when people don’t realise how thin he is, and handed them over to her. She shuffled through the passports, IDs, bank account statements for Yang An and Yang Jia, father and daughter, before looking slowly up at him.

“Won’t they try to find us?” He smiled painfully. A question he had debated himself, with Mukuro and Chrome, Lambo listening solemnly.

“You brother is well on his way to being ready to take the mantle. As for you...” He snorted bitterly. “It’s doubtful you’d produce a Sky, with how strong your Flames are, and there are more than enough Lightnings for Giotto to sync with. So they won’t have a solid reason to find us.”

“...But, you, the Aunts and Uncles-”

“Haven’t been close to me in a long time, Nana,” He interrupted gently. “I… have been pulling away, for a long while. I don’t know if they noticed and assumed it was nothing, or that I needed time, but by now, that distance can’t be crossed.” He looked down at his hands, remembering the distant smile Hayato had given him when he checked in, the absent-minded questions of an acquaintance. No, he wouldn’t be missed. Not as much as he might have been a decade ago.

Nana looked back down at the papers in her hands, biting her lip. “We’ll have to leave Giotto.” A tooth pressed hard enough to cut her lip, making her bleed. “...I don’t think he’d want to come with us,” She whispered.

No. He wouldn’t. He’d never fought against this life, thrived in it as Hayato and Takeshi had. They both knew this, and even as she had heart-breaking relief come over her face, she sobbed.

He hugged her tightly and prayed for all their futures.

* * *

Tsuna wondered how many times he could say it, before people listened. Dozens, hundreds, thousands, all the way up until the zeroes couldn’t be counted.

_ I don’t want to be a mob boss _ , he screamed Reborn when he first appeared. 

_ I don’t want to be Decimo _ , he repeated to Hayato, Iemitsu, Dino when they dropped into his life.

_ I want to live a normal life,  _ he whispered to a sympathetic, if uncomprehending Enma.

_ I want to be left alone _ , he sobbed to a terrified Kyoko.

_ I want to escape, _ he told Nana, _and_ _ I want you to too. _

Tsuna wondered if they would finally take him seriously when he disappeared.

* * *

Tsuna decided to escape on a sunny day, after a meeting with Xanxus and the other Varia. They had been discussing budgetary concerns, a recent assassination that had a neutral family from Germany riling, and he’d had the drawling thought, looking up as he walked out to the car that would take him back to the main compound, that he didn’t need to do this.

Not really.

He knew the mafia in and out, at this age. Knew how to make someone disappear, forge a new identity so solid no one would ever discover the truth, delete evidence to the point where it was doubtful anything had occurred. He had an idea who would support him, who he could trust to help, if only because they weren’t raised in the thick of it. 

He knew he wouldn’t be needed, in a few years. He knew he didn’t want to see his children take his place. He knew no one suspected him of still wanting to leave, having stopped voicing his complaints long ago.

He could run away, leave, if he wished to, and no one could stop him.

It’s little effort to make the decision, after that.


End file.
